Twelve ancient elven statues awakened simultaneously, their mithril-crafted joints emitting a harsh metallic screech, like a death symphony being played.
These guardians turned their heads mechanically, sapphire-encrusted eye sockets locking onto their target.
The armored plates on their palms slowly slid open, revealing within magical blades poised to strike.
These blades were not physical objects, but manifestations of pure arcane energy, flickering with an unsettling blue glow in the dimly lit hall.
Rein's pupils contracted sharply as he instinctively pulled the infant tightly against his chest. His right hand danced through the air with the grace and speed of a butterfly weaving through flowers, tracing intricate Elven incantations midair. With each completed sigil, the crystalline cluster on his right arm shuddered violently, bursting forth with emerald light.
The radiance wove itself into a glowing web, ultimately forming a translucent green barrier shimmering with flowing ancient Elvish script.
"In the name of the Goddess of Life!" Rein uttered in a low, fierce voice. As the final rune snapped into place, the shield flared brightly. He could feel the crystalline growth on his arm ravenously siphoning his life force, the sharp shards digging deeper into muscle and sinew. But he had no time to care—the first wave of energy bolts was already screaming toward them.
"Down! Now!" Rein's roar echoed like thunder through the enclosed hall. In a single leap, he lunged toward Ravenna, his right arm ablaze with blinding green light as the crystalline cluster pulsed in furious overdrive.
At the exact moment Rein tackled Ravenna, twelve streaks of blue light erupted simultaneously. The shrieking howl of the energy bolts tearing through the air was deafening, sharp enough to make their eardrums ache. Scorching currents of heat whipped through Rein's loose hair, and several strands of silver instantly disintegrated into ash under the searing temperature.
The deadly beams of blue light skimmed just above their heads, scorching a blackened line into the ancient mithril wall behind them. Melted metal dripped down like tears, hissing softly as it cooled.
Ravenna's pupils contracted to pinpoints under the blinding light, a ring of stress-induced blood vessels blooming at the edges of her irises. She caught the acrid stench in the air — the unmistakable scent of burned hair, singed to a crisp by the intense heat.
Her mechanical heart whirred frantically within her chest, the rapid click of meshing gears audible through bone. A feverish flush bloomed across her pale cheeks, driven by a surge of adrenaline, forming a disturbing contrast to the cold, mechanical blue light emanating faintly from her chest.
"Thirty-second intervals!" she cried hoarsely, her human vocal cords trembling with fear—yet still clinging to the precision of tactical analysis. Sweat streamed down the unmodified side of her temple, gathering at her sharp chin in a glistening droplet.
Rein noticed her right pinky twitching uncontrollably—a minute, involuntary spasm of flesh in the face of imminent death. That subtle detail struck him like lightning: beneath that ever-thrumming mechanical heart, she was still human—still capable of fear, of pain.
"Hold on!" Rein growled, forcing the crystal shield to surge outward once more. He caught sight of Ravenna's unaugmented left hand clawing at the floor, her fingernails carving five bloodied grooves into the ancient stone tiles. Her mechanical heart was pounding louder and louder—so violently it seemed it might shatter the fragile cage of human ribs around it.
And then—a baby's soft cry pierced the chaos.
Like the whisper of a spring, the sound trickled through the tension, inexplicably soothing the storm. The furious whir of Ravenna's artificial heart began to steady, its grinding softened, its rhythm settling.
Her deep brown eyes refocused at last, locking onto Rein's bloodied face reflected in them.
"How... ironic..." she gasped with a bitter smile.
"The most advanced mechanical heart... calmed by the simplest thing in the world... a baby's cry..."
Her voice grew fainter—her unaugmented body had reached its limit. Yet that mechanical heart within her refused to yield, pulsing with defiance. The blue glow it emitted shone through her thin clothing, flashing steadily in the darkened hall like a lighthouse in a sea of death.
All around them, the metal joints of the twelve elven statues shrieked, scraping like knives drawn across steel. Rein clutched the infant tightly to his chest, feeling its tiny heartbeat pulsing through the swaddling—so fragile, and yet so unrelenting.
The crystalline growth on his right arm surged out of control, spinning a web-like emerald barrier in the air, the light flickering erratically under strain.
Then—"Rein…"
Ravenna's voice called out from behind him, uneven and trembling in a way that wasn't just physical.
Rein spun around—and his pupils narrowed to pinpricks.
A beam of energy had slipped through a gap in the barrier, striking Ravenna squarely in the right shoulder. Even more horrifying: the flesh around the wound was crystallizing, spreading outward like frost on glass. Beneath her skin, sickly purple curse sigils bloomed like a plague, writhing and branching with unnatural speed.
"Don't move!" Rein dropped to one knee, pressing his left hand against her quivering shoulder. He could feel the corruption crawling beneath her skin—the curse devouring her living tissue from the inside out. That indomitable mechanical heart still beat beneath his palm, but the blood it pumped had already begun to harden into crystal within her veins.
Time was running out.
Ravenna's lips had turned pale, the color drained entirely. Cold sweat soaked her forehead, matting her bangs against clammy skin. She tried to muster a careless smile, but it only twisted her mouth into a painful grimace.
"Looks like… I'm slowing us down this time…"
"Shut up."
Rein's voice cut through the air like glacial steel. His right arm flared with emerald light as the crystal cluster suddenly surged forward, its jagged tip driving straight into Ravenna's wound.
This wasn't healing.
It was extraction.
The purple curse sigils erupted like swarming insects, drawn to the crystal spear as if pulled by a magnetic force. They screamed across her veins toward Rein's arm, flowing into him in a grotesque flood of arcane venom.
"AAAH—!!"
Ravenna's scream was raw, torn from the depths of her soul. Her body convulsed violently, her unaugmented left hand clamping down on Rein's wrist, fingernails digging deep into his flesh. Her mechanical heart blared an overload alarm, the blue glow beneath her ribs flickering wildly like a dying star on the brink of collapse.
Rein clenched his jaw, veins bulging in his neck as the curse energy rampaged through his body. The crystal embedded in his arm shuddered, converting the corrupted energy into healing magic—but the process was excruciating, like molten iron being poured into his bloodstream.
Every second dragged like a century.
Then—a thunderous tremor tore through the hall.
The massive crystal chandelier above shattered as it slammed into the ground, fragments exploding outward. One shard sliced across Rein's cheek, tracing a line of blood down his face.
He barely flinched—but his gaze darted upward.
The statues were moving again.
No longer in their stationary formation—they were reconfiguring, adapting.
They'd abandoned long-range attacks.
Now, each statue raised a gleaming arcane blade, stepping forward in eerie unison. The three in the front had already entered attack posture, blades aimed forward in a perfect formation.
The tips of their swords were now less than ten meters away.
"It's too late…" Ravenna shook her head weakly, her pupils beginning to lose focus.
"Go… now…"
But just as her words faded, the infant in Rein's arms suddenly opened its eyes.
Deep ink-green irises shimmered with swirling runes, ancient and alive.
From the baby's tiny palm, a beam of pure white light erupted—silent, searing, absolute. It struck the nearest statue, and the effect was instant:
The guardian froze mid-step, its arcane blade flickering before the energy dissipated entirely, leaving only a lifeless hilt.
That impossible moment of reprieve was all Rein needed.
His expression hardened. He made his decision.
With a fierce motion, he drove his crystal-clustered right hand into the stone floor. The crystalline growth burst outward like roots breaking free, spiderwebbing across the ancient tiles in a glowing frenzy.
Ancient Elven incantations spilled from his lips, half-chanted, half-growled through clenched teeth.
Suddenly, the entire floor lit up with an eerie green radiance, veins of light pulsing from his outstretched hand.
All twelve statues froze at once.
Their internal energies—magic forged and sealed centuries ago—were now being ripped from them, violently drawn into the web of crystal spreading from Rein.
But the scale of this drain was far beyond what his body could bear.
His skin began to crack, hairline fractures snaking across his arms, his chest, his face.
Blood welled from every pore, trickling down to form dark, pooling streaks at his feet.
And worst of all—the crystal growth was spreading, spiraling up his arm toward his chest…
Toward his heart.
"Are you insane?!"
Ravenna tried to rise, her voice ragged with desperation.
"If you keep going, you'll—"
"Shut up, Ravenna."
Rein's voice was raw—a rasp like sandpaper dragged across bone. His right hand was fused to the floor, crystal roots embedded deep into the rune-etched stone. Emerald light pulsed from the web of fractures on his arm, crawling across his pallid skin and casting a sickly glow on his face.
Ravenna's mechanical heart shrieked in alarm, a piercing wail of systems failing under stress. Her tangle of burnt orange-red dreadlocks clung to her sweat-slicked cheeks, and her dark red leather armor now bore a charred, smoking hole where the energy blast had hit.
"You're going to die… you idiot…"
She tried to rise, her voice cracking with both pain and fury—but her heart let out a strained ka-ka-ka, a grinding stutter that told her: it wouldn't last much longer.
Then—the impossible happened.
With a thunderous boom, the ancient bronze doors of the hall were flung open, slammed inward by a titanic force. Stone dust exploded into the air as a hulking figure strode into the chaos.
Nearly two meters tall, his massive frame was encased in rust-streaked steam armor, hissing with pressure from thick rear-mounted exhaust pipes that belched white fog with every step.
"Found you, little rats."
The voice came low and muffled from behind a heavy mask, dripping with menace.
A blazing emblem of gears entwined with flame was welded onto his chestplate—a symbol Ravenna knew all too well.
Her pupils contracted in shock.
"That's 'Iron Coffin' Villesax," she whispered, breath catching.
"One of the most infamous executioners of the Abyssal Council's Alchemist Sect."
Worse still—three more figures emerged behind Villesax.
On the left, a tall, gaunt man draped in a flowing violet cloak. His exposed skin crawled with living runes, squirming like parasites under translucent flesh. That was the warlock Romshaw, master of forbidden incantations.
To the right, a woman with a massive rifle slung across her back. Her right eye had been replaced by a glowing mechanical implant, and the left side of her face was a twisted mess of burn scars.
She was known as Lady Black Rose—a merciless enforcer with a kill record whispered about even in the darkest corners of the underground.
But it was the presence between them that set every instinct screaming.
A formless figure, floating weightlessly, its body shifting and mutating with no discernible outline—only a churning mass of shadow and smoke, constantly reshaping itself.
That was the Council's newest weapon:
The Shadow Warden.
No heartbeat. No flesh. No weakness.
"Hand over the Holy Child."
Villesax's voice boomed through the armor's loudspeaker, each syllable grinding like rusted gears gnashing together, a cruel chorus of mechanical menace.
He took a single step forward—
The floor shuddered beneath his weight.
The exhaust pipes on his back spewed scalding steam, warping the air into twisted, grotesque shapes.
"Or—"
He lifted his power hammer, the massive head glowing with accumulating charge,
"I'll use your bones as fuel."
In that instant, Ravenna's mechanical heart surged, pulsing like a war drum against her chest.
Rein didn't hesitate.
He pulled Ravenna behind him, shielding her with his own broken body.
"Dream on."
Two words.
Quiet. Cold. Absolute.
His voice cut sharper than steel—colder than the deepest, frozen layers of the polar abyss.
His right arm exploded into motion. The crystal cluster—now a writhing mass of jagged, venomous growth—lashed out like a serpent, its silver-white thorns trailing arcs of green light in the air.
The faint glow of the infant's healing magic still clung to those crystalline vines—
But now, it had been twisted.
Refined into something deadly.
A promise of annihilation.
The words had been soft.
But the effect was instant.
The temperature in the hall plummeted.
Breath turned to frost.
And every heart—even mechanical—skipped a beat.
Romshaw let out a chilling laugh, flicking his fingers as a bolt of purple lightning surged straight toward Ravenna. Rein tried to intervene, but his overloaded crystal clusters had left him paralyzed.
At that critical moment, the entire hall's air seemed to freeze.
"Wind, cease."
A cold, clear voice echoed down from the shattered skylight above.
The purple lightning shot by Villesax hung suspended midair, like a venomous serpent trapped in ice.
Everyone looked up to see a slender figure standing atop the broken beam.
It was an elf.
Silver-white hair loosely tied back with a leather cord, a few stray strands framing sharp ears.
He wore worn travel leather armor, a slender curved dagger at his waist—the sheath etched with elven runes Rein had never seen before.
Most striking were his eyes: glowing faint violet in the dim hall, with swirling galaxies seeming to spin deep within his pupils.
"This is not your place."
His voice was soft but dropped the temperature of the room drastically.
Beneath Villesax's mask, his breath grew heavy.
"Another long-eared fool come to die," he grunted.
The steam vents on his armor hissed white-hot mist as he raised his power hammer, slamming it to the ground.
But the elf had already landed lightly three meters away.
Rein noticed the elf's boots made no sound on landing—an advanced elven technique known as "Windstep."
More astonishingly, when the elf raised his hand, the frozen purple lightning suddenly reversed course, racing back toward Villesax.
"Mirror Return."
The elf's lips parted lightly.
Villesax's hastily raised shield shattered as his own lightning blasted it apart.
His black cloak instantly scorched and blackened.
Lady Black Rose seized the moment and pulled her trigger—but the elf only turned his head, glancing once at the bullet speeding toward him.
"Stasis."
The bullet, mid-flight, suddenly froze half a foot from the elf's brow, then clinked softly to the ground. Lady Black Rose's mechanical eye spun wildly, and for the first time, genuine fear flickered across her scarred face.
"Wordcraft…" Rein whispered hoarsely, his crystal cluster crackling under the shock.
This was the legendary elven arcane art, long lost even before the destruction of the Elven Forest.
As Rein stood stunned, the infant in his arms suddenly opened his eyes—those deep emerald pupils swirling with countless ancient runes like a starry cosmos.
"Eldrin var shandris (Life and Death are one)," the baby's innocent voice echoed through the hall.
A pure white light surged from his tiny palm, causing delicate silver blossoms to unfurl across Rein's crystal cluster—each petal etched with miniature runes.
The elf spun sharply, eyes filled with violent ripples of swirling galaxies.
"How… can this child…" His voice faltered for the first time.
Villesax's armor roared in overload as he swung his power hammer, steam trailing behind it.
"Die!"
The elf didn't dodge—instead, he gently closed his eyes and spoke a single word: "Slumber."
That word seemed to carry the weight of a thousand pounds.
Suddenly, Villesax's helmet snapped shut with a harsh click, followed by the dull thud of his armor collapsing inward.
The Shadow Warden surged forward as a black mist, but the elf spun his blade in response—the curved dagger glowing with a silver-moon radiance.
"Shadow Slash."
The arc of his blade crystallized into a shimmering light trail, cleaving the black mist in two with a piercing, unearthly shriek.
Villesax's face paled. Crushing a teleportation rune in his fist, he bellowed, "It's the 'Starspeaker'! Retreat, now!"
A flash of purple light, and the council members vanished without a trace.
As the elf sheathed his dagger, Rein caught sight of a rune flickering briefly on his left pinky finger.
The elf seemed to notice his gaze and narrowed his violet eyes slightly.
"Ithryl Starong." He pronounced his name with the lilting cadence unique to elves. "A scholar who's traveled the realms for many years."
Ravenna's mechanical heart finally steadied. Grimacing, she sat up and said, "A scholar? What we just saw hardly looked like the work of a bookworm."
Ithryl Starong ignored her teasing and focused his gaze on the baby. The little one was clutching Rein's crystalline blossom, mumbling indistinct syllables. Suddenly, he clearly spoke a word:
"Return."
The word was like a key— Ithyrl Starong's expression instantly changed. He knelt on one knee and took out a silver leaf from his chest pocket, its veins shimmering with liquid starlight.
"Take this to the Withered Gorge in the North," he said, placing the leaf in the baby's palm. "The Moonlight Well there still works."
Rein's crystal cluster suddenly twitched as if stirred by an unseen wind. "Why are you helping us?"
"I'm not helping you." Ithryl Starong stood up, his pointed ears twitching—faint sounds of the Abyss Council's mechanical legion clashing with the Thieves' Guild came from afar. "He's speaking the ancient elven prophecy." He pointed at the baby. "'When the new elf embarks on the return path, the withered shall bloom anew.'"
Ravenna whistled. "So this little one isn't just the Sanctum's holy child, but the prophesied elven savior?"
Ithryl Starong didn't answer. Instead, he suddenly drew his blade and slashed through empty air. With a sharp clang, a sniper bullet was split in half and fell to the ground. The Abyss Council's first wave of pursuers had arrived.
"Go." Ithryl Starong flicked sparks off his blade. "Through the eastern corridor—there's a secret passage to the underground river."
Rein scooped up the baby, glancing once more at Ithryl Starong. He saw the elf pull his hood back on, the silhouette sharp as a pine against the backlight. The distant explosion cast a glow over the elf's waist, where that strange curved dagger hung. Now Rein could see clearly: the dagger's sheath wasn't covered in runes, but a small inscription:
"To the wandering star, may you find your return."
Ravenna tugged his arm. "Enough poetry, time to run!"
As the first true rays of dawn pierced the clouds, they slipped into the underground river. Behind them, in the ruins, the silver-haired elven ranger stood alone in the center of the hall, his curved blade tracing a burning silver line on the ground. Facing the mechanical soldiers flooding in like a tide, he simply said two words:
"Halt."
The entire legion collided with an invisible wall. The front row soldiers were frozen mid-charge, locked in place. Ithryl Starong looked up at the fading morning star and quietly whispered in ancient elven:
"May your return path lead you to the stars."